La segunda (y última) parte de la entrevista es ésta (en inglés):
GG: Tell me more about your interests in theme parks - what is it
about them that interests you?
MJ: My favourite thing about theme parks - and I have a pretty good outlook on it because I've travelled the world many times over - is I love seeing people simply come together with their families and have fun. It really does bring them closer together. I go for fun, but I also go to study. I go after hours to most parks because I can't go in the regular hours. They're kind of like a ghost town.
GG: I hear you have some ideas for a theme park in Las Vegas?
MJ: I've done many projects in Las Vegas, and what I think I've done is I've widend the demographic there. Because when I was a little kid - I was no more than eight years old - my brothers and I would go to Las Vegas, and at that time kids weren't even allowed to walk on a casino floor. So we used to stay up in our rooms, bored, with nothing to do while everyone else gambled. There was only one place for kids in Vegas at the time, calld Circus Circus. It was a hotel and the theme they had there was clowns, So there was a trapease man and there were chimps doing the little unicycles. When I got older we played Vegas a lot - we performed there many, many times - and I thought about it and I said, 'It's really not fair that there's nothing here for children,' so I started to conceive a couple of ideas for certain hotel owners. And now it's like the family-themed vacation kingdom, it really is.
GG: Who are your favourite people?
MJ: I love people who have really contributed to the pleasure and
hapiness of the planet and mankind, people with light - from Walt
Disney to Ghandi to Edison to Martin Luther King. These are people with light, people who really cared about children, bringing families together, and love. That's what I try to say in my music and in my songs. If you go to one of my concerts, my shows, you will see 200,000 people swaying, holding candles, saying, 'We want to heal the world,' and 'We love you.' I've seen it around the world from Russia to Germany to Poland to Africa to America. We're all the same. People cry in the same places in the show. They get angry in the same places in the show, they get the pathos in the same places.
GG: Was Fred Astaire your friend?
MJ: Yes. Fred Astaire was my neighbour. I used to see him every day when I was riding my little motorscooter. He always told me, he would always say when I was a little kid, 'You're gonna be a big star.' He told me that he thought I was an incredible entertainer and a great mover. And he always used to say, 'You're the best,' and I'd say, 'No, you're the best.' I remember the first time I did the moonwalk. Fred called me at home. He was screaming on the phone, raving. He said it was the best performance he'd ever seen. I said, 'Oh, come on.' He said, 'Michael, you put them on their ass.You're a hell of a mover. You're a hell of a dancer.' I said, 'Well, coming from you, I don't need any awards.' Because I was nominated for an Emmy for that performance, and I didn't get it, but it didn't matter to me because Fred Astaire said he loved my performance, and that's all the award I needed.
GG: If you could work with anyone, alive or dead, who would that be?
MJ:If I could work with anybody it would be Charlie Chaplin, who I
love so much. Also, Laurence oliver was a genius, really.Those two guys, I think. And also the king, Brando.
GG: Last year you put together a short film, You Rock My World, with the assistence of Marlon Brando. What was it like working with the master?
MJ: Brando is a good friend of mine. He's very much like me. He
doesn't go many places. He comes to Neverland or he stays in my
house in Mulholland Drive, or he goes to Tahiti. His son worked for me for more than 20 years, and his other son was in my class in private school. He's just a giant. You see, Brando's smart, because when he works with me he always says, 'I know what buttons to push to get emotion from you.' He knows me so well. He knows how to get me ticked off, so he'll say certain things to get me really geared up. He's a genius. He's a king. He's the last of that generation. He's a brilliant man, a lovely person. I love him and he's my good friend.
GG: You had a cameo in Men In Black II, was that fun to work on?
MJ: The Men In Black project really was a lot of fun because I introduced myself as the new guy.
GG: It was obvious from the video of Thriller that you have a great interest in the visual arts.
MJ: Everything I do I like either to direct myself, or work closely
with the director - we co-direct and come up with the ideas
together. If you look at Gulf (I think they made a typo there lol...
should be Ghosts), it says co-written by Michael Jackson and Stephen King. We wrote it on the telephone, Stephen and I - he's a lovely guy, he's amazing. We wrote it on the phone, just talking together.
GG: Who are the figures in the movie business you most admire, and why?
MJ:I just love Robert De Niro. I think he's such a multi-faceted
actor. He can play anything from a comedian to a preist to a
psychopathic killer to an idiot to a charming uncle to just
anything. And of course, any of the great dancers.
GG: Who would be your ideal leading lady, and why?
MJ: An actress? {laughs} You and I should do a film together. Let's do it, I'd love that...
GG: There was talk of you going to the moon to perform an authentic moonwalk here. Is there any truth in this?
MJ: {laughs} There is some truth in it. It's not a rumour. I'll just
say that.
GG: You outbid Paul McCartney for the Beatles archive. What was so special about it?
MJ: No, I didn't, he didn't bid for it. It was for sale and I liked
it and I bought it, like buying a piece of art.
GG: Tell me more about your passion for children's charities. Which organizations do you support?
MJ: Well, I have a charity for kids that I created myself, called
Heal the World. And whenever I do a concert or anything pertaining to entertainment, I give a certain amount to Heal the World - you know orphanages, hospitals, kids who need a lung or a liver, we'll find it, we'll pay for the surgery. On tour, I do as many hospitals and orphanages as I do concerts. We go to 12-years-olds and we take boxes and boxes and boxes of toys, a bunch of Michael Jackson posters and paraphernalia. They love it.
GG: How much more do you feel you want to achieve in your life?
MJ: I'm never satisfied. There are so many different avenues and so many different things that I want to do. I've done a lot, but I
don't think it's enough, which is why I don't put up any awards or
anything in my house. You won't see any awards in my house, I put them all away in storage. Because if you get caught up in that, you start to feel like, 'Oh, man, I did it.' There's so much more, so many more mountains to climb.
GG: If one of your children came to you and said, 'Dad, I want to be a pop star,' what's the best advise you could give them?
MJ: The best advise that I would give them is it's a lot of hard
work, and be propared, because it's not all joy all the time. And
that you've got to have rhinoceros skin, because the bigger the
star, the bigger the target. The tabloid press are bastards, and
you've got to have rhinoceros skin to deal with that kind of
ignorance mentality. They do it simply to sell papers, because bad
news sell, not good news. They simply make it up. If they don't have anything, they just make it up. I'm nothing like the way the
tabloids have painted me out to be, nothing. Nothing like that.
They're the ones who are crazy. They're ignorant. I always say to my fans 'Let's have a tabloid burning. Let's make a big mountain out of tabloids and just burn them.' The real fans who love me know that garbage isn't true. They know. They're smart.
GG: Have you always wanted to do film? If your family had not been such successful musicians, would you have turned to it earlier in your life?
MJ: I've always wanted to do film, but the tours got in the way.
That's why I want to take several years off just doing film. I'd
like to get six great movies behind me, and then I'll do a little
bit of touring, then I'll do more filming.
GG: What kind of ideas do you have for film?
MJ: I have ideas for film and movement and dance and things that people have never seen. I can't wait to just surprise people. That's why I've been dying to start a film production company, and I'm very excited that that's what we're doing with Neverland Pictures. I get to just have a clean slate and play and create and sculpt.
GG: Tell me a little bit about the werewolf idea in your films, and
how does it relate to video?
MJ: I haven't read the script yet for Wolfed - it's one of the
movies that we're going to be making and I'm really excited about it. I'm so happy to be working with Sammy Lee {the co-writer of Music Box, who recently acquired 'first look' rights to Jackson's films}. We're doing some great projects together in film, and I'm really excited.
GG: And Wolfed will be the first film?
MJ:As of now, our schedule says that Wolfed will be the first film.
That's going to be fun. I want it to be really scary. Rick Baker
wants to do all the visual effects. He has seven Academy awards.
Rick is very excited about it too - he did American Werewolf in
London. He won an Oscar, and he said, 'Michael, that was nothing.' That's nothing compared to what he can do today. And he did Thriller and he said of that, 'It's nothing'. He can go way beyond that. He did all the Eddie Murphy films, Clumps and Nutty Professor and all that Men In Black stuff too. He does all that.
GG: So tell me how you would like to be remembered?
MJ: How would I like to be remembered? As a person who came and brought light to the world, some escapism. Also as the voice for the voiceless children, because I love them. I'm living for the
children. If it weren't for the kids, I would throw in the towel. A
baby, a child - now that's amazing. They're little geniuses, you
know, little geniuses. They really are.
GG: Do you enjoy being a father?
MJ: It's my favourite thing. I love it. I love it. I love it.
GG: The other day I saw you pick up your daughter when she was sleeping. You just picked her up, and I could see the joy in your face...
MJ: Oh, I love them. The Jacksons have a lot of kids. I have a lot
of nephewa and nieces. There's a lot of us!
GG: What is your relationship with your brothers and sisters?
MJ: I love my brothers and sisters. When I'm with them we laugh.
It's like a different version of yourself. We can just laugh and
giggle and talk about old times. We're not together as much as we'd like to be. We're all busy. We're all in showbusiness. We're always doing something. If I'm in town, Janet's out of town. If we're both here, my brother's somewhere else. Everybody's running around, you know.
GG: Are you a family man? What do you like doing with your family?
MJ: My personal family? My Children? We love just sitting together, talking, shooting the breeze. We sit by the lake. I take the for a walk every day at my house. We sit by the lake and we throw rocks in the water and we just talk.
GG: What do you think is the deepest form of love someone can feel? And have you felt it?
MJ: Wow, I think that's really a matter of opion. Have I felt the
deepest form of love? I don't know what would be the deepest...
{long pause} and interesting question... {repeats question a few
times}. I love my children very, very much, and I always look in
their eyes and tell them that - I think that's the most important
thing.
